On a dry riverbed—
earnestly or insincerely?—
wondering if rocks miss the water,
thinking first “their” water
then revising it
out of conviction
nothing is really owned.
Anything with a mouth can bite you.
The Nature Center employee states
what we ourselves have intuited.
I got a tick and some flint.
I removed some flint and a tick.
Flint as nature’s jawbreaker.
Shell within a shell.
My phone suggests I am a carrot
and yet we still go to it for answers.